


Confidence Man

by freneticfloetry



Category: What's Your Number? (2011)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: Colin Shea is a goddamn gift.Or: five times Colin reminds Ally how awesome she is just by being himself, and one time Ally reminds Colin that that's exactly what love is.





	Confidence Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PR Zed (przed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/gifts).



> Huge thanks to templeandarche, who watched the movie just to be my marvelous beta.

The first time he'd ever picked up a guitar, it had nothing to do with music. He'd been sixteen and shirtless, mowing the lawn and minding his business, when a voice called out from the porch next door — their new neighbors' daughter, fresh off her first year at Berklee, smiling slyly over the railing in cutoff shorts and a cutaway acoustic. 

"You're a pretty quick study," she'd said, half a day and half a dozen chords later. By the time she'd started school again, he'd learned much more than music.

He couldn't remember her name if his life depended on it, but the guitar had been a Taylor.

Teenage sexploits aside, Colin Shea has always been quick. Quick on his feet, quick on the uptake, quick with a laugh or a line or a lie. Every inch as quick-witted as his mother, every once in awhile as quick-tempered as his dad. And, like any decent cop's kid damn well should be, quick to adjust if shit heads for the fan.

Which is why, when the slow stomp of familiar heels drifts up the stairs, he has enough sense to course correct. He never expected her to be skipping through the door — exhaustion is the default after a full day of Darling women — but if it's this hard to handle the home stretch, craft beer and Thai takeout just isn't going to cut it.

He shoves it all into the fridge, pulls a pot out for pasta, grabs two glasses and last week's leftover Bordeaux. Times like these call for carbs and tannin and bad TV in bed.

Out in the hall, the echoing ascent of doom has just passed the fourth floor landing.  Across the counter, his phone chirps her custom Google Alert.

"Fuck," he says, frozen for precious seconds too long.

Threat Level YouTube. This is not a drill.

By the time the footsteps make it up the last flight, he's put away the wine and the pot and the pasta and there's nothing but a bottle of tequila on the table. He props a hip on the peninsula as a key turns in the lock, then Ally drags herself across the threshold, drops a box of pastel madness at her feet, and slumps against the door at her back.

"So it went well?"

"It's a boy," she says.

" _Mazel tov_ ," he answers. "Were there waterworks? If there were waterworks, you owe me twenty bucks."

"Oh, there were tears." She makes her way down the entry steps, dropping like a stone from tread to tread. "That was mostly my mother. She wept tears of abject betrayal for about five seconds."

Colin cringes — the three of them have been genetically blessed in many ways, mother and daughter Darlings alike, but attractive criers they are not. "Then she remembered that good grandmothers are supposed to celebrate even if the unborn kid in question also comes with an unborn penis, and you all lived happily ever after?"

She shuffles toward him and smiles grimly, which is probably where the YouTube comes in. "Then she finally registered that _Daisy_ was in tears, too," she says, "since the possessed piñata baby took one good whack, shot 'it's a boy!' diaper diarrhea _directly_ into her face, and _tore her goddamn retina_."

"Oh shit."

"Yep. _Metallic blue confetti_ shit."  She sways forward until her forehead hits his chest, and he gently kneads her hips in his hands. "We've been at the hospital for two hours. I've been sitting in a waiting room _with my mother_ for _two hours_."

"Baby —"

"Too soon," she groans. "God, the guilt trip was epic. Like I'd put her only hope at grandchildren in grave and terrible danger. Like single, childless little me couldn't possibly comprehend the wonders of pregnancy, and how it mutates the body so miraculously that even an _eye injury_ will directly affect the _uterus._ "

The ' _single'_ part might sting a hell of a lot more if it wasn't likely a direct quote. Still, the ache is there — could be because he hadn't exactly gotten an invite, or because her mother still calls him "Kevin," or because, after three months of milestones and monogamy and near-cohabitation, she still hasn't dropped that 'think' from her 'I love you.'

Which doesn't mean she adds the _think_ every time she's said it since, as much as it means she hasn't said it again at all.

But this is totally not about that.

"It was a freak accident," he says. "Not your fault."

"No? Eileen made the cake. Jamie made decorations. Katie made menus and mocktails and little cucumber fucking sandwiches." She steps away, throwing her hands in the air. "I made a paper maché baby that almost blinded my sister for life. How is that not my fault?"

He tilts his head and squints. "For _life_ , though?"

"They gave her an eyepatch. She looks like a pregnant pirate."

"Tell me you took a picture. It'll give you something to laugh about later." She shoots him a look that's half murderous and half miserable. "I mean _with her_. You know, post… Dread Pirate Daisy. Curse of the Not Girl. Daisy Jones' Locker." That gets a laugh, just barely, but there. "She's okay, right?"

He already knows the answer — all told, Ally loves her sister more than just about anything, and if Daisy weren't perfectly fine, temporary blindness notwithstanding, they wouldn't be having this conversation.

"No permanent damage." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. " _Fuck_ , this is dumb. I don't even know why I'm acting like this."

Colin crosses his arms across his chest and his feet at the ankle. "Because you worked hard. And you wanted it to be perfect."

"Which is why it's so fucking dumb! Who the hell has a _gender reveal shower_? Like, I worked my ass off for a month, spent money I can't afford to spend, and maimed my pregnant sister, for what? Because _Katie saw something on Pinterest_? I don't even know what Pinterest _is_."

Her face is a cloud of confusion and frustration and something long-broken that still hasn't healed. He's almost positive this is what 'permanent damage' looks like.

"It was never gonna be perfect for her, Ally."

She opens her mouth, blinks into his suddenly-serious face, and shuts it again. Because he doesn't mean Daisy, and she knows it.

"I was going for good enough," she says, and shrugs. "For her treat me like an adult, for once, instead of some adult-shaped little girl she has to clean up after."

It's probably not a great time to point out that both a giant blue bib with 'Team Boy' spelled out in blocks and a makeshift diaper made of tattered toilet paper have survived the shower, two hours of waiting room torture, and the trip home — at best, in a taxi, at worst, on the T — so he reaches out, tugs her in, and tucks her head beneath his chin.

" _Fuck Pinterest_ ," she screams into his shirt. "I need a drink."

He pivots her toward the waiting bottle of tequila, and just behind his back, his phone chirps again.

Yeah, they'll just have to steer clear of YouTube.

 

 

The first time he'd ever met Ava Darling, she’d ignored him through three full courses, sniffed "so nice to meet you, Kevin" in his general direction, and left him to tip the valet.

"So that's Mom," Ally had said sheepishly. "Any chance I can just apologize now and have it be kind of a standing thing?"

There'd been a passive-aggressive follow up the next morning. _"Oh Allison,"_ it began, as if her own phone call had caught her by surprise, _"the foundation is still soliciting sponsors for this year's benefit. If you speak with Jake, see if you can't work it into the conversation."_   Ally had dropped her head to the back of the couch, Colin had snickered before he could stop himself, and Ava had taken the ball and run. _"Well don't let me keep you. I'm not feeling my best today — some sort of stomach bug, I think. Do thank your friend for dinner."_

He'd picked up her phone, scrolled through the contacts to her mother's smiling face, and swapped the laughing Joker with the theme to _Jaws_.

She'd waved a hand and nodded at the ceiling. "That's fair."

There was the _Thinking of You_ card that came in the mail, accompanied by an extensive brochure on egg freezing. _Something to consider_ , the inside had read. _Not all of you can afford to wait around for Mr. Right._ She had hacked the whole package into tiny pieces, and he had and escalated the early warning system to full-on _Mommie Dearest_.

 _Halloween, Psycho,_ and the Wicked Witch of the West later, it's taken on a life of its own.

After a long day with her mother and a long night with Jose Cuervo, Ally's back to business as usual. Her latest commission is a piece for the window of Bova's Bakery — a round, rosy-cheeked woman in a polka dot apron, frosting on her nose and flour in her hair, with a rolling pin in one hand and a plate of pastries in the other.

Colin sits on the couch and flips through a magazine, pretending not to watch her work. Not that she'd notice, anyway. Ally fills every other waking moment with movement and laughter and larger-than-life energy, but here, with the whole world narrowed to her workbench, she is silent, still, with a laser focus that's inexplicably fascinating.

Her face is a breath away from the pastry tray, a steady hand glazing little clay croissants with the tiniest paintbrush he's ever seen, when the Imperial March blares to life just beside her left ear. She lets out half a strangled yelp, tips sideways on the stool, and drops like a ton of bricks.

He scrambles to his knees and finds her sprawled, spread-eagle, on the floor. She blinks up at him, bewildered.

"What the hell just happened?"

"The Empire struck back," he says, wincing while the phone marches on. "I switched it after the third round of 'fuck Pinterest.' You okay down there?"

"That depends. Is it possible to break your ass?" She screws up her face and rolls to one shoulder, then stops cold. "Oh _balls_ , Granny Baker!"

He climbs over the back of the couch and reaches down to help her to her feet. "Granny Baker is good. She's a tough old broad."

He pulls her up by both wrists, since the paintbrush is still clutched in one hand and the other is curled into a fist. Her fingers unfurl, and she stares at her empty palm in confusion… _right_ about the time he catches the vial of half-empty epoxy hanging from her hair.

"No," she says. He lifts the bottle gently away, trailing a thick string of something sticky behind. "No, no, no, no, _fuck!_ "

She makes a beeline for the bathroom while he squints at the label, looking for warnings and active ingredients and any other shit that might kill her. On the workbench, the Imperial March starts round two.

" _Don't answer that!_ Shit. She always knows when I've fucked up my hair."

"Yeah, it's your mother I'm worried about right now," he mutters, coming into the bathroom behind her. "Did it get on your skin?" She's frantically scrubbing at the front of her hair with a wet towel, which only seems to be making it worse, but he's focused on the stretch of skin down her jaw and all along her collarbone that's getting redder by the second.

Reaching into the tub, he cranks on the shower. "Is there any saving that shirt?"

She shifts the towel to one side to get a better look at the splash zone. "Doubtful," she says. "Jesus, it looks like I jacked off a hot glue gun."

"One art jizz incident at a time, please," he says, before he takes the collar in both hands and rips the whole thing clean open down the back. "Arms out, hop in."

She steps out of her shorts and steps into the tub, and he toes off his shoes, kicks off his jeans, tugs his shirt over his head, and climbs in after. He lathers his own bar of soap between his hands and sweeps them across her skin, and she slathers her hair in shampoo and sputters out a laugh beneath the spray.

"You know what I just realized? We've never showered together."

He snorts, not sure it counts when they're still in their underwear. "I'm sure it's everything you dreamed it would be."

"Hey, anyone can have questionably safe shower sex," she says. "Checking your boobs for chemical burns? That takes somebody special."

She raises an eyebrow in mock seriousness, then goes cross-eyed to make an indescribable face at her hair, and he suddenly feels flayed wide open, like his blood is too hot and his skin is too tight and his heart is too big for his chest, and wonders if this is what it's like to love someone so much it hurts.

"I'm gonna go get towels," he says.

He leaves hers folded on top of the toilet seat, pulls on dry clothes, and takes a putty knife to the epoxy spots on the hardwood. He's just gotten the last bit of it to budge when a crash from the bathroom makes him freeze.

"How's it going?" he calls, cocking his head to listen for an answer. When it's clear one won't be coming, he hangs his head, pushes to his feet, and heads back into the fray.

She's standing at the sink when he comes back in, doing a decent impression of Cousin It. There's a broken hairbrush handle in her hand, its other half sticking out of the sink, and everything from the left side of her nose to the right side of her jaw is tangled together in one solid clump.

"Wow," he says, because there's nothing else to say.

"Yeah," she answers. "That about sums it up."

He's racking his brain for something, _anything_ , when she swaps the broken brush for a pair of scissors, twists a chunk of hair in her hand, and hacks off the whole thing in one fell swoop.

She snips at the stray ends and sighs at her reflection, fingers fanning out the wet hair across her forehead. "Fucking bangs," she says. "I wish I knew how to quit you."

"That's 'fringe' in the Queen's English." He sniffs. " _Americans_."

His accent is awful. Her laughter is worth it.

He comes up behind her to get a closer look. By some strange stroke of luck, or Ally's special brand of magic, she's managed to cut them clean across, feathered just below her brows in the middle and a little longer as they move toward her temples.

"I don't know, I kinda dig it," he says. "Good bangs are like those curtains on cabanas. They don't actually cover up anything, and yeah, you can always see straight through them, but when the wind blows just right and you get a glimpse of the sky, you'd swear you've never seen anything so blue."

They lock eyes in the mirror as he wraps his arms around her waist. When she shivers, he can't tell if it's the chill or the contact.

"Nice try, buddy," she finally says, not quite covering the catch in her voice. "You are not about to sell me on bangs."

He sweeps the rest of her hair over one shoulder and drops a kiss at the top of her spine.

"Audrey Hepburn had bangs," he counters, nuzzling the nape of her neck, "and never wore a single pantsuit."

 

 

The first time he'd ever gotten caught in a compromising situation, he'd been halfway through a hookup in a grad student's gourmet kitchen when her roommate had come in to grab an apple from the fridge. Looking back, that moment of sheer panic he'd felt when the lights went on was probably the first step toward his embargo on going back to a girl's place for the night.

That said, the roommate in question had finished her fruit and joined in the fun, so things had worked out pretty well in the end.

The new bangs look even better blown dry. He puts a hand on her chin and turns her face to the light, running a thumb over the lingering redness. When he strips the towel away and trails his hand lower, she rolls her eyes with a groan.

"I don't recall spilling anything on my vagina."

"Well, you never can be too careful."

He's got her flat on her back, two fingers tucked inside her and his tongue curled around her clit, when the phone symphony starts up again.

The Imperial March is impossible to ignore in the best of situations, much less mid-cunnilingus, but trying to would be significantly easier without the subsequent knock on the door.

She stiffens, fingers tightening in his hair, thighs clamping down around his head like a vice. "Oh _, fuck_ ," she moans, in a way that's meant to be mortified but, to his ears and his brain and every one of his nerve endings, still sounds like she's seconds from flying off a fucking cliff.

"Ally, I swear to god," he says, locked between her legs, "if I come in my pants with your mother outside I may never maintain an erection again."

At the sound of the second knock, her knees fall open and she pushes up on her elbows, looking between him and the door with wide eyes and a whisper that's half breathless.

"You think that, if we stay quiet and don't move, she just won't know that we're in here?"

"I think that she's a lot of things," he says, "but a _T-rex_ isn't one of them."

There's no telling how long she's been out there. Even without the ringtone of doom, the 'quiet' ship has pretty much sailed.

They roll off opposite sides of the bed, grabbing clothes from the floor as they go. She ends up with her shorts and his shirt — still can't hang on to those worth a damn — and he steps into his boxers and reaches for her robe with a groan. It won't be the first time he's greeting a Darling in Ally's apartment in nothing but his underwear, but they could all do without what's left of his hard-on.

She darts for the door, and he sits on the couch, flexes his calves, and conjures all the high school calculus he can in his head. Not that either helps all that much.

" _Hi_ , Mom!" Ally greets, brittle and falsely-bright, and he grits his teeth behind a grin and gears up for the inevitable — _"oh honey, you look flushed"_ or _"I see you've both dressed for company"_ or _"honestly, Allison, in the middle of the day?"_

What follows is a frown and a flick of her hand through Ally's hair and a "did we really need to do the bangs again?", and it's like dousing his dick in ice water.

She sweeps into the apartment, shopping bags in tow, and Ally shuts the door with a sigh. "Sometimes bangs just happen."

Ava stops short at the sight of Colin on the couch. He waves, just to make things decisively worse. "Oh," she says, truly flustered for once, "I'm sorry, dear, I did try to call. I didn't realize you had company."

It's pretty low, as blows go, since the doors are old and the walls are thin and Ally moans like she's playing to the cheap seats.

"We've been a little busy." He gets to his feet, dick be damned, and feels Ally's glare without even looking. "Can I get you anything?"

Ava moves around the living room like she's afraid to touch anything. "No, thank you." She leans over the workbench, where Granny Baker sits atop an old cake stand he'd found in a thrift shop in Allston, and makes a pinched, pained face. Across the room, Ally presses her lips together.

"Did you need something, Mom?"

"It's the thank you notes," Ava answers, coming back around the couch and raising the arm loaded up like a pack mule. "Daisy's obviously in no position to do them, and poor Eddie couldn't string a proper sentence together if his life depended on it."

"It's been eighteen hours," Ally says flatly. "The thank yous can probably wait."

"They most certainly cannot," Ava says, aghast. "The event went _painfully_ awry, but we can't just lose sight of proper etiquette."

Colin hums. "I see what you did there."

"Sure, Mom," Ally says loudly. "I'll take care of it."

Ava laughs, just a little, and the sound sets his teeth on edge. "Oh, don't be silly. I came to get the gift log. None of the other girls have it, I've checked, so it might have come home with you last night."

"Oh," Ally says, and blinks over at him. "Oh."

"Yeah, I'll get that," he says, because she hasn't said anything else and he fears she might be broken.

The box she'd dropped at the door last night has been dragged under her desk, and he digs around until he finds a bound book with a baby on the cover… and an unwrapped package, a package he'd watched her wrap himself. The package that contains Ally's gift for her sister.

On the plus side, at least she'll be spared from the inevitable shit show of the thank you note.

"Here you go," he says, handing the book to her mother and hoping the rest is implied. To her credit, she seems to get the message.

"Well I'm off," she says. "You can just toss the rest, I can't imagine anyone would want it. Ally dear, I'll call you about breakfast next Saturday. Good to see you again, Kevin."

He can't close the door behind her fast enough.

"Well that went well," he says. "There's no way she'd have recognized the ringtone, but I thought for sure there'd be more shaming about the sex noises."

"I'm the last person she called," Ally says incredulously. "Literally _the last person_."

"To be fair, we were Star Wars screening."

" _Why is she like this?_ "

'Because you let her' isn't an entirely fair answer, so her takes her shoulders in his hands and turns her toward the bedroom, instead.

"Get dressed," he says. "Let's take a little field trip."

The Vogel residence is a two story townhouse on Beacon Hill with a sprawling view of Back Bay, because apparently everyone is independently wealthy but him. When Daisy comes to the door, it's in a dress draped elegantly around her belly and an eyepatch that's been bejeweled.

"Ally, _thank god_ , Mom is driving me nuts," she says, and tilts her head to the side with the good eye. "Oh my god, your bangs are back! Cute."

"See?" He nudges Ally's arm with a wink. "We've come to the right place."

The main level is one wide open space, with glass railings and grey-washed floors and blinding white on every other surface in sight.

"Great place," he says, wondering how the hell it will withstand an actual human child. Then he looks back to Daisy — gorgeous, glowing, the very picture of pregnancy perfection, even in an eyepatch — and figures that they'll manage.

She settles on the white tufted sofa and tugs Ally down beside her. "What's up?"

Ally shakes her head, slowly, as if she's moving through fog. "I… don't actually know."

"Right, that's my cue." He shifts around the coffee table to pass her the bag he's holding, and her brows pull together in confusion. "Go easy, it's fragile."

She glances inside and tries to give it back, he takes a big step back and puts his hands in the air, and Daisy snorts and says "so the two of you came all the way over here to play hot potato" and takes the whole thing out of Ally's hands.

"You don't have to," Ally starts, but the box is out of the bag. "Okay, then."

Daisy sets the box aside, unwraps two layers of tissue paper, and gasps. "Oh. Oh, _Ally_."

The figure isn't unlike the cake topper — Daisy and Eddie, in their wedding day duds — but she looks down at her waist, and he smiles over her shoulder, and the two of them join heart-shaped hands over the slight swell of her stomach, matching rings glinting gold on their fingers.

"Before we found out he was a he, the best thing was finding out he was there at all," Ally says, twisting her fingers in her lap. "And I know it's not the way you wanted to do it, and it only happened to save me from the wrath of Mom, but… I thought you should be able to celebrate it. Because you never really got to."

The look Daisy gives her is the whole reason they're here. Daisy is high maintenance as hell, more her mother than Ally will ever be, but she means well. And she loves Ally fucking fiercely, which is more important than anything at the moment.

"You _had_ to make me fat in my wedding dress," she finally says, but it's choked out around a sob and her face is slowly crumbling and tears are escaping from underneath the eyepatch. She leans in, can’t get close enough, and has to rock back to gain some momentum.

Ally meets her in the middle, sniffling into her shoulder.

"I took some artistic license," she says. "Just be happy I left out the croissanwich."

 

 

The first time he'd run into an old hookup with Ally in tow, they'd just caught their first game at the Garden. Not that he'd actually recognized her. They'd been walking out the west gate, riding the high of a Celtics win, when a distinctly female voice called "Colin?" in a tone that he'd come to know well.

"Hey," he'd said, burying his hands in his pockets and coming up blank. The redhead factor should've narrowed it down — not his usual type — but last call is a dark, blurry time, and his history is even blurrier.

"Hey? _Really?_ " Shaking her head, she'd turned to Ally in disgust. "Don't even waste your time. The sex is great for the one night, but you'll never hear from him again."

He'd opened his mouth without a clue what to say, and Ally had slipped her hand into his.

"Relax, it's fine. All part of the process." She'd turned to the girl, eyes full of sympathy. "I'm his sponsor, Kelli. With an 'i'."

"Um," Redhead stammered, suddenly wrong-footed. "Delilah."

"Oh that's lovely," Ally had said, channeling her mother so well it gave him chills. "I'm glad we ran into you, Delilah. Colin here is at that point in the program where he's supposed to make amends with all the women he's wronged, and frankly, we're just never gonna find everybody unless we start stumbling across them on the street."

"So you're, what, an alcoholic?"

Ally had barked out a laugh. "God no! _Sex Addicts_ Anonymous. He can't control where he puts his penis, but he can handle his liquor just fine." Delilah looked pointedly at their linked hands, and Ally reached over to pat the back of his with her free one. "Contact therapy. We're big on the nonsexual touching."

He'd cracked on the cab ride home. "Good old Kelli with an 'i'," he'd said, letting the sound of her laughter settle the knots in his stomach. "Patron saint of one night stands."

Then he caught her eyes in the flash of a streetlight, and all his had unease fallen away.

"Just steer clear of the hand job," she'd said. "Even the sainted have their sexual dysfunctions."

They duck into a pub on their way out of Beacon Hill, some spot on Charles that's pretty packed for a Sunday. Ally leads the charge through the crowd to the bar, her fingers woven with his, and they've almost made it when someone cuts across traffic, barrels into them both, and knocks Ally flat on her ass.

Colin scoops her up, sets her back on her feet, and spins on the asshole responsible. " _What the fuck_ , man?"

"Sorry, dude, it's a madhouse in here," the guy says. "You alright?"

"All good," Ally says, finding his hand again with a squeeze. "We're good, right?"

He nods, she nods, and just behind the other guy, a vaguely familiar brunette adds a very familiar "oh shit, _Colin_."

This day just gets better and better.

The other guy has just started eyeing him suspiciously when Ally steps forward and shakes her head. "It's okay, Andrea," she says gravely. "I told him everything."

The guy's eyes flick back and forth between the three of them. "Wait," he says, "what the hell is going on?"

Which is a damn good question, to be perfectly honest. One he has no fucking clue how to answer, so he really hopes Ally has a plan here, because this whole thing is a bar brawl waiting to happen.

"You must be the fiancé. I feel like I already know you." Ally tilts her head reverently, pressing her palms together as if she's in prayer. "I met Andrea at a time in my life when I was going through some dark, _dark_ things. My mother was a coke-addicted acrobat who sold me to the circus for a hit, and after I got out of the life, I had so many _scars_ , you know? Those… damn tigers."

Colin's managed to keep his expression in check, but that one almost does him in. He coughs to cover the laugh caught in his throat.

"Sorry," he says, thumping a fist on his chest, "still gets me."

She nods, slapping his back just a hair too hard. "I tried to leave it all behind. Got a job, got engaged. But every time I thought I was really over it, there was always something that flipped that old switch. A pitched tent. The smell of shelled peanuts. The resounding crack of a bullwhip." She trails off, looking wistfully off into the distance. "And then, I'd just, I'd backslide. I can't tell you how many women there were. Three, four, five at a time. The positions. The _props_. Naked pawns for the performance in my head."

"What the hell kind of circus was this?" the guy mutters.

"And then came Andrea," Ally says. "Literally. What we shared was magical and pure and almost physically impossible. It took someone more limber than I could ever to be to show me that the _real_ contortion… was _in my soul_." She reaches out and lays a hand on the other woman's face. "Thanks to you, I finally got the help I needed."

"I'm…" Andrea blinks. "Really glad?"

It comes out like a question, and Ally breaks character just long enough to pat Andrea firmly on the cheek. Some people just can't be helped.

When they finally make it to a table, Ally plops down on the bench and orders two beers as if nothing at all has happened. Colin shakes his head and slides in beside her.

"You've gotten better at that since 'Mom fell in the shower and she's wet'," he says. "And speaking of falls."

She shrugs. "I figure the poor guy deserves to know she's cheating, just not necessarily with someone he'd probably punch in the face."

"For all the good it did. Andrea's none too quick on the uptake." Their order arrives, and he swipes a thumb through the condensation on the glass. "I do remember her, you know."

She'd been the last in a very long lineup, the final fuck-and-run. Long may she reign.

"I should fucking hope so," Ally says, tapping the neck of his bottle with hers. "That girl has amazing tits and eyes like Bambi and the longest torso I've ever seen in my life. Honestly, I'm kind of a downgrade."

 

 

The first time he'd ever had sex with Ally, he'd been riding the high of 'I love you' after five months of foreplay and lasted all of four minutes flat.

She'd flopped back to the bed and sucked in a breath, still swallowed by terrible pink taffeta.

"Wow," she'd said, "I think we just broke the Jerry Perry record," and he'd groaned out a laugh and ducked under her dress and started all over again.

Three drinks and a T ride after Andrea, they manage to make it up the final flight. He backs her to the wall next to her door and dips a finger under her waistband, traces a line below her belly button just to feel her shiver.

"Keep that up and we're not gonna make it inside," she breathes against his neck.

"Also true if you don't open the door."

"Touché. Do you have my keys?" He starts to answer, and she presses a finger to his lips before he can speak. "Not the key to my panties or whatever pervy thing you're thinking, my _actual keys_."

Two minutes and one text to Daisy later, they're officially locked out.

"Luckily, we have an alternate apartment!" She slips her mouth over his pulse and her hand into his back pocket, hunting for keys he barely uses anymore. "We'll use your place, it's fine."

They crash through the door and down the stairs, shedding bits and pieces of clothing on the way. It's too dark to see, but he knows this dance from memory, could move through the steps in his sleep. He licks into her mouth, tastes the beer on her tongue, and something throbs in his chest, sudden and sharp and altogether wrong, when nothing's ever been wrong about Ally.

She kicks off a shoe, stumbles, and bounces onto the unmade bed, and the sight of her there, half naked on his cheap sheets like a hundred girls before her, is enough to make his blood run cold.

"Totally meant to do that," she says.                                                     

"Ally — "

"It's the culmination of my master plan. Spend the first three months as a hopeless hot mess, then fuck you sideways when you least expect it."

"You're only short the vinyl catsuit," he says, and sits heavily on the edge of the bed.

"Hey." She sits up, suddenly serious, and puts a hand on his knee. "What's happening right now?"

"You tell me, Kelli with an 'i'. Which sex addict step is a spontaneous mental breakdown?"

"One?" she says, with complete sincerity. "Anything past that seems kind of counterproductive."

He chuckles in spite of himself. " _Oh_ , Ally. You really never cease to amaze me."

"Is this an 'and' or a 'but' situation?"

"And when we started this, I stopped tracking down your exes," he says, pulling her hand into his lap. "You shouldn't still need to help me escape mine."

"That's what this is about?" she says. " _Andrea_?"

He thinks of waking up to Ally that first time — in their clothes, in her bed, with a picture of the girl she'd been just behind her — and how, after running for so long, he'd ended up exactly where he was supposed to.

"This is about you," he says, and swallows. "Here."

His eyes have adjusted just enough to catch the little shake of her head. "I'm not following."

"This is all I've ever done here," he says. "Stumble in from some bar, get some girl in my bed. I've done this a million different times, with a million different girls. And that is what it is. It's just not what I want us to be."

She sniffs, squeezes his hand, and turns to stretch out on the bed behind him.

"Come here." When he hesitates, she pats the pillow with one hand. "Trust me. C'mon."

He slides into in the space beside her, fingers tracing the curve of her spine. Her new bangs brush against his forehead, and when she puts a hand on his face, it's as warm and welcome as it had been that first morning.

"It wouldn't be us, couldn't be," she says, stroking his jaw with her thumb. "There may have been a million girls, but I'm the girl who loves you."

 

 

The first time he ever wakes up with Ally in his own apartment, they're only conscious thanks to Darth fucking Vader.

"Goddammit," he says, swiping at his eyes, "I have _got_ to rethink that ringtone."

Ally groans into his bare shoulder. "I can't do it. I refuse. It's too early in the morning for my mother."

"You're gonna have to talk to her sometime." She nods, noncommittally, and he gives her a little nudge. "I mean — "

"I know what you mean, we both know what you mean, let me have my last day of denial." He snorts into the top her head and feels her sigh against his skin. "This may come as a shock to you, but she's not exactly the easiest person to talk to."

"So don't make it easy," he says. "You know what actually shocks me? That you gave yourself permission not to be this idea of a perfect woman, but spend all your energy trying to be her idea of a perfect daughter." He ducks his head to catch her eyes, brushes the bangs away so he has a better view. "You gave Daisy her big moment back. Might want to take yours while you're at it."

She stretches up to kiss him, smiling by the end, and it's the best way to start any morning.

"You amaze me too, you know. You're always… shining a light on whatever I can't see clearly. Even when it then leaves me blind in the bathroom."

Between the night before and this morning after, he can't quite get enough breath in his lungs to answer.

"So," he says after a while, "what are we doing on this last day of denial?"

"I kinda feel like I can do anything," she answers. "Maybe even a half-decent hand job."

Her face is lit up and her voice is full of laughter and he loves her more than he's ever loved anything.

"Yeah," he says, "let's not push it."


End file.
